Operators of several Eastern Iowa small farms and food assistance programs gathered Monday, March 31 to voice their opposition to the cancellation of $1 billion in funding for the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) and Local Foods for Schools (LFS) programs.
Iowa Rep. Sami Scheetz organized a news conference at the Buffalo Ridge Orchard near Central City to let local food producers share their views on the impact of losing the LFPA and LFS programs, which were created in response to supply chain shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Funding for the two programs isn’t being renewed, the USDA announced earlier this month.
Iowa’s agriculture department awarded nearly $2 million in LFS funding to more than 160 schools in the state, which allowed kitchen managers to stock salad bars and school lunch trays with fresh produce from farms in their communities, without breaking their tight budgets.
The LFPA funded the purchase of local food, defined as within 400 miles, for underserved communities. Iowa was awarded more than $5.6 million in funds for the program to purchase local food for food banks, nonprofit organizations, food pantries, early childhood centers and senior centers.
Aron Brecht, food donor relationship manager for the HACAP Food Reservoir, which serves an estimated 40,000 food insecure residents in Linn, Johnson, Benton, Cedar, Jones, Washington and Iowa counties, said the loss of LFPA funding comes as HACAP is seeing increasing demand for food assistance services.
Mr. Brecht said that about 20% of the food HACAP distributes has been purchased through LFPA. HACAP received about $125,000 in LFPA funding over the past three years, allowing them to purchase items including produce, dairy and meat from local producers.
“One of the more important and more lasting things from LFPA, for food banks, is the connections that we were able to make along the way,” he said. “We work with all of our local producers that we possibly can, either through the food hub or direct purchasing from farms, and we are going to continue to do that.”
As a result of the cuts, he said, the funds that came from the LFPA will now have to be raised through increased donations to HACAP.
He noted that another state program, the Choose Iowa food bank program, seems to have support from both sides of the aisle in the Iowa Legislature and could help offset the loss of federal LFPA and LFS funds.
“We’re very thankful for that, and hopefully we can see some more funding come through for that,” he said. “We’re going to be in favor of anything that gets food, especially that healthy, nutritious food, into the hands of our neighbors in need. And obviously the economic stability that local purchasing brings helps community action programs, because that is a big driver of getting people out of food pantry lines and into self-sustainability … we look forward to perhaps a new program that’s maybe in line with the current administration’s policy priorities, that can still benefit producers and our neighbors in need, and they can leverage those those dollars to continue making those connections.”
Emmaly Renshaw, senior program director for Iowa Valley Resource Conservation & Development (RC&D), noted that in Linn County alone, 15 small producers participated in the LFPA program, and another 13 participated in LFS. Those producers received $360,000 from selling products to the LFS and LFPA programs. Nine LFS participating schools in Linn County received $79,000 in funding for produce, meat, dairy and fruit. And 25 food access partnerships, including food banks and senior senior meal programs, received $78,000 in LFPA funding.
Producers have used funds from the two programs to purchase tools and equipment for their operations, and most of those purchases are made locally, she said.
“The other thing that I’ve really seen with the LFPA and LFS programs is the ability to build our infrastructure,” Ms. Renshaw said. “Here in Iowa, as we become more specialized in our agriculture, we have lost our capacity for processing, for transportation, for cold storage, because a lot of our commodity products don’t need that. So it is really difficult for small farmers to grow their businesses when they don’t have that larger infrastructure system in place … so my call today would be to reinstate the federal funding for LFPA and LFS for Iowa. That’s $11.3 million over the next three years to not only help with food access, but to continue economic development here in the state of Iowa.”
Anna Pesek, co-owner of Over The Moon Farm near Coggon, said her farm, founded in 2019, has been selling pork, chicken and other livestock products through the LFPA and LFS program since 2022. She said her farm’s hog production went from 10 hogs to 75, “all of which are going to feed our community,” and increased bird production from 100 to nearly 4,000 per year.
“For us as a livestock business, what this federal funding has meant has been putting more money into our local communities and seeing investment that we desperately need to see in Iowa,” Ms. Pesek said. “Building these resilient supply chains, we’ve been taking more animals to small butchers that also received funding through COVID relief programs, so we’re helping them stay in business, we’re helping them grow, helping them buy more processing equipment, and putting more money into local communities. We’re also buying more feed. Growing livestock is a cash-intensive process, so we’re supporting small local feed mills.
“We’re spending so much more money in our local communities,” she added. “And without these programs, we really lose a lot of market access. We will have to pivot to doing 100% of our sales directly to individual families, which is a lot more labor-intensive and will make us have to scale down a bit. Farms like ours and communities here in northern Linn County and Delaware County, we really can’t wait until the next natural disaster or next COVID pandemic to happen for us to continue building these supply chains. We need to keep doing it now so that we’re prepared and resilient and businesses like ours can remain financially viable into the future.”
Mari Hunt Wassink, owner of Black Earth Gardens near Cedar Rapids, a small-scale, regenerative vegetable producer, said she’s seen a 20% to 25% increase in her farm’s revenue through participating in thh LFPA and LFS programs, “which is a huge deal for me as a startup farmer, to be able to demonstrate and quickly build up viability and profitability in my farm rght off the bat in those kind of crucial first years, and it’s allowed me to reinvest that money that I’ve gotten through those programs to build capacity to scale up my vegetables.”
“I became a farmer because I want to feed my community, feed my neighbors, and I want to make sure that local healthy food is accessible to everyone in the community,” she said. “The end of the LFPA and LFS program really couldn’t have come at a worse time for me. I had already purchased all my seeds and supplies and equipment and started some seeds that I had planned to sell through the LFPA and LFS programs, before I heard about the cancellation. And so now I’m dealing with buyers who are having to back out of those agreements that we had made during the wintertime that now they won’t be able to follow through with because that money is going away beyond this year. I’m also in the last year of a farm business incubator program that’s run through the nonprofit Feed Iowa First. So if I can’t find long-term farmland at the end of this fall, I will have to stop farming. The fact that I’m facing a 20% to 25% decrease in revenue for my farm because of the end of LFPA and LFS, at the same time that I’m trying to make a case to loan officers at the USDA and at banks to be able to demonstrate my profitability to buy farmland, really puts in jeopardy the future of my farm and my life with it.”
Marcus Johnson, co-owner of Buffalo Ridge Orchard, said like other small producers, he’s been able to upscale operations at his farm due to LFPA and LFS proceeds, including planting more trees and buying more processing equipment.
“One of the local benefits that we’ve been able to add additional employment opportunities,” he said. “We’re just an 80-acre farm, but we’ve been able to provide for two farm families, my wife and I as well as her parents, and then we employ up to four additional employees throughout the season. And the past couple years, we’ve been able to have employees held over throughout the winter, so we’re not just employing seasonally through the summertime, but also over the wintertime to provide employment, so those benefits do spread out through the community. These programs are able to provide opportunities for all farmers, not just small farmers, and any land opportunities like that could be expanded to provide local food options for the community and for other farmers to make money on their own land.”
The owners of Over the Moon Farms and Buffalo Ridge Orchard write an open letter to the USDA earlier this month, expressing their concerns about the food assistance programs’ cancellation.
Mr. Scheetz said he’s not sure how much funding might be available from the Legislature for food assistance programs, but that state lawmakers need to hear about the impact of these funding losses on small producers in the state.
“Is it going to fix the problem entirely? No, but I think it’s important for people like myself and other policymakers to hear about what those decisions actually mean in people’s lives,” he said, “and consequentially, what we should be doing as a Legislature at the state level to try and address some of the problems that this decision creates.”
